Near Macs Inn, Idaho.

I awoke to a cold morning and immediately ventured out, into Mountain Time, through Stinkingwater Pass, the Great Basin, across the state line, into Idaho. Through the encroaching suburbia of Boise, across the scrubland and ubiquitous brown mountains that define southern Idaho's landscape. Upon arrival in the county town of Fairfield (pop. 394), I got directions to Worswick Hot Springs. It was about a 20 mile venture into wildnerness, up and down the V-shaped mountains that give name to the Sawtooth National Forest. With some helpful maps, I finally came upon the springs. And there were real live cowboys there! Border collies, horses, hats and moustaches. I found the source and found it to be much too hot. In frustration, I followed the stream down a little, and there it was. Paradise. Hot bubbling water from the Middle Earth. I drank it, swam in it, absorbed and utterly alone (cowboys were long gone).

I continued down Highway 20 through the Craters of the Moon National Monument, complete wasteland and then into the wasteland of the Idaho National Laboratory where the sun was obscrued by a strange haze. In the middle of the Lab is the world's first nuclear reactor EBR-1 and some machinery destined to create a nuclear powered plane (Kennedy shut it down). I was utterly alone there as well and ate lunch in this ominous environment. I was hungry anyway.

Now I am parked in a gas station parking lot about 15 miles from West Yellowstone, Montana. A sound of a helicopter distracted me for a moment until I saw it lifting off immediately before me, and an ambulance pull away, and a lone car circle the lot after that in awkward loops. It just sat there with its lights on.